Nominations Re-submitted for MSPB Board

The White House has re-nominated the same three persons it proposed last year for the MSPB governing board, which has had only one member and thus has been unable to rule on appeals of hearing officer decisions for more than two years.

Dennis Kirk, currently an attorney in private practice who previously held career positions with the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Army has again nominated to become chairman. The other two are Andrew Maunz, an attorney in the SSA general counsel’s office who has represented the agency in employment litigation, and Julia Akins Clark, general counsel at the FLRA during the Obama administration who is now a senior official in the in-house employee appeals office of Congress.

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The three had a generally cordial confirmation hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee last July, but the committee never brought them to a vote. At the time, they said their main priority would be to tackle the backlog of appeals that has built up, above 1,500 late in the year.

Meanwhile the administration has designated OPM general counsel Mark Robbins to concurrently serve in both that job and as an acting member of the board. The sole member since January 2017 has been serving on a temporary extension which itself is expiring.